


The Hanged Man

by marimoes



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Anders Saved, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen, Suicidal Thoughts, Tarot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:27:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25615078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marimoes/pseuds/marimoes
Summary: Hung by his own rope, Anders swings against the stone walls of Kirkwall. Their very own Hanged Man.(A Tarot card character study of The Hanged Man)
Relationships: Anders & Hawke
Kudos: 6





	The Hanged Man

It doesn't feel like he thought it would. 

The ground beneath him feeling the same as all the other times, air just as clear above his head and yet, without him knowing, this was it. The final time Anders would escape the hold that kept him for so long. 

Regardless of the joining, the Warden, and the others—he's sure it's all just an elaborate ruse to nullify him before bringing him back. As they continue to travel, traversing lands Anders has never seen, he realizes that it's anything but that. He may have actually done it. 

He may be free. 

When the air smells of rot and decay, world bending beneath him, he reconsiders his freedom. Becoming a Grey Warden is not an escape. It was merely a passing of the chains from one entity to another while still kept under a hold that will one day end his life.  So, he runs. He runs just as he did seven times before, but this time he doesn't look back. The ocean keeps the distance for him, with salted air and interesting company. Delaying the inevitable—it’s become somewhat of a specialty for Anders. But putting a pause on what will next hold him is all he can do when he slinks into Darktown. 

It’s safe, regardless. It’s home, perhaps. It’s another cage, for certain. 

Within this one, he can at least help. He can do as he so often has done before, but now for many more: heal. An action that reaches further into himself each time his hands press against sickly skin, pulling it back to health. It sits in the promise of Justice, whose being intertwines more with his own with each passing day.  It may be another cage, but it’s one of his own devising. One that he knows how to escape if needed, and that would at least be opened by his own hands. 

When Hawke arrives, party in tow through the doors of the clinic, it feels all too familiar. A curious glint sits in Hawke’s eyes as they look for him. It dawns on him that not too long ago, Anders worked with someone else with the same look. That same presence that swept over a room when they entered it. Wordlessly d emanding attention and ushering change. 

Anders' warning is delivered with thunder and promise, yet Hawke doesn’t flinch. They aren’t afraid like the others were, or rather, maybe it's because they’ve seen things far worse. Anders isn’t sure if the latter gives him comfort, but it again gives him pause.  It makes the rope in the corner seem farther away, and the papers next to it brighter. Change could be achieved with Hawke, Anders thinks. Considers. Prays. 

Years pass, words are written, and more mages are made tranquil against their will. A martyr is made beneath his own actions, alongside the others. Though he doesn’t feel like one when his chest keeps him up at night, with thoughts that take Karl’s last moments and loop them with no end. He instead feels like a prisoner again.  To break the shackles on his hands, along with his brethren, will take far more than words. For it to work, truly, it will take action. Something of a magnitude that one would consider sacrifice. One that Anders knows will take his life. 

Even then, he is no martyr as he hangs the rope against the chantry’s door. No martyr as he loops it around his wrists, and with a smile asks Hawke to pull him up. Anders has never felt more content as he is from this angle, seeing the world as it treated him all this time—Maker, it almost makes it clearer. What a cruel trick of fate. 

When the world shatters around him, it does so in a symphony so beautiful it brings him to tears. Walls of iron and oppression topple all at once, and when the fire doesn’t consume him—Anders again pauses. With a plea he’s never heard from his own lips, he surrenders at Hawke’s feet. Surely, he should be dead for this. The price set in the exchange for freedom that he was willing to make years ago as well as minutes.  Instead, his rope is loosened. Thick knots undone with hasty hands and worry digging into frowning skin. An ders is let down the way he expected to do to the others; all at once, dropped on the ground without warning. He becomes something he’s never been before, hand steadying as it wraps tight into Hawke’s. 

He is no longer the hanged man. 

Anders is free. 

**Author's Note:**

> Twitter: @__moes__


End file.
